Firefighters in South Yorkshire have been testing their ability to respond to large scale industrial incidents.

Crews took part in a training exercise at the premises of Culina Ambient, Hellaby, near Maltby,Rotherham. to put them through their paces.

Dozens of firefighters were involved in the live training which was designed to test the plans that are alrready in place to deal with an incident on the site.

Agencies including Yorkshire Ambulance Service, South Yorkshire Police, the Environment Agency, Rotherham Council and Public Health England also took part in the exercise, helping the fire service to also test how effectively it works alongside other emergency services.

South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue regularly carries out training exercises at commercial premises across the county to rehearse how it would respond to an emergency on the sites, some of which are required by law to test their contingency plans.

Station manager Dave Scully said the exercises allow firefighters to gain experience while testing procedures.

He said: “Exercises such as this are vitally important for two reasons.

“First, they give our crews excellent experience of dealing with incidents, bringing realistic scenarios to life in real time.

“Second, they help both us and the business to test the procedures that we have in place to deal with a major emergency on their site.”

“How we work alongside our emergency service partners - known as interoperability - is another important aspect to training like this, as there is much we can continue to learn from one another about our ways of responding to incidents.”